Linus Pauling Quotes

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

Do they deserve to die?" but "Do we deserve to kill them?

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one. You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.

If in order to kill the enemy you have to kill an innocent, don't take the shot. Don't create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.

Morality, thou deadly bane,Thy tens o' thousands thou has slain!

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse.

What we call “morals” is simply blind obedience to words of command.

We were taught to kill the enemy. They were evil. We were doing something good.

War is a grim, cruel business, a business justified only as a means of sustaining the forces of good against those of evil.

There are two kinds of people in this world, son. Those who save lives, and those who take lives." "And what of those who protect and defend? Those who save lives by taking lives?" "That's like trying to stop a storm by blowing harder. Ridiculous. You can't protect by killing.

When I appeared before the draft board examiner during World War II, he asked me if I thought I could kill. "I don't know about strangers," I replied, "but friends, certainly."

I realized early that unless you're willing to kill the innocent, you can't win.

The Time Lords really didn't like genocide. I'm not too keen on it myself. It's the potential you're killing off. What if, one day, there was a good Dalek? What if...

Morally it makes no difference whether a person is killed in war or condemned to starve by the indifference of others.

The third rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means.

Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight. But roaring Bill, who killed him, thought it right.

Civilization means, above all, an unwillingness to inflict unnecessary pain ... those of us who heedlessly accept the commands of authority cannot yet claim to be civilized men.

Out of your awareness you cannot become soldiers in a war because you will be able to see, with clear eyes, that you are going to kill people - people who have done no harm to you personally, people just like you. They have their children, their wives, their mothers, their old fathers to take care of - and you are killing the person just to get a gold medal. Your gun will slip out of your hand, and that will be an act of awareness. And you will feel tremendously blissful that it happened; even if you are being shot your death will be a glory, a peace, an adventure, a journey into a new world.

He kills people. Now I'm no expert, but doesn't that make you a bad person?" Jamie glared at Nick. "You've killed a lot more people than he has. What does that make you?" "Not a person," Nick murmured, not sounding particularly interested. "Surely you remember.

The killing of innocent people is a sin.

I think it is obscene that we should believe that we are entitled to end somebody's life, no matter what that person has supposedly done or not done.

Fear is the mother of morality.

To kill, in war or in any circumstance, creates a silence. It is right that silence should surround the taking of life. After all, the life taken is not ours to take.

Someone once asked, 'What is the difference between me and Saddam Hussein?' The answer is, 'I have a conscience and he doesn't.'